Sydney - Australian shares tumbled Friday following steep losses on Wall Street and in Europe.

Sydney  - Australian hikers on the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea were mistaken in thinking they had stumbled upon the body of a World War II pilot, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) said Thursday.

What they actually found last week was not a corpse in a parachute harness caught in a tree but a mossy branch with an uncanny resemblance to a human form.

The Kokoda Track is a popular hiking trail for Australians and Japanese visiting the locations where their forces clashed in 1942. Beginning 50 kilometres east of Port Moresby, the PNG capital, the Kokoda Track runs for 96 kilometres through the rainforest of the Owen Stanley Range.

Melbourne, Sept 4 : Australian police has warned people not to be duped by Internet romance scams.

The warning came after a 45-year-old man lost 20,000 dollars to someone he met online, while a 47-year-old woman was left waiting at an airport.

Queensland State Police Minister Judy Spence said that the cops are investigating the online romance scams in which people had been ripped off thousands of dollars.

Sydney - Australia has its first shopping centre with a ban on hooded clothing, news reports said Thursday.

Tweed City Shopping Centre in the east coast town of Tweed Heads announced that hoodies, such as hooded sweatshirts, would be banned after sunset on Thursdays on a trial basis.

Tweed City manager Michael Tree said the move was about curbing shoplifting rather than enforcing a dress code.

"We haven't been walking around targeting people," he said. "It was all about disguising your appearance to the security cameras."

Melbourne, Sept 4 : A primary school girl in Australia was forced to undress and sexually threatened by two men during a class sleepover, earlier this year.

The incident came into light after the teachers raised an alarm about school safety.

According to one of the teachers, two men were waiting in the toilets when the girl got up during the sleepover and threatened her to perform an act of indecency. They also took photos of her during her ordeal.

South Australia''s Acting Education Minister Jay Weatherill has ordered a review of school supervision guidelines after being alerted by The Advertiser.

Melbourne, September 4 : A 19-year-old Australian man has landed himself into trouble by burping in a police station in Tully, south of Cairns, Queensland.

A Queensland police spokesman alleged that the man burped twice in the face of an administrative assistant at the front counter of the police station, and when asked to control himself, he began "swearing, became abusive to police and aggressive in front of others including an elderly woman waiting at the counter".